2005-07-10

All that Copyright info

You may have noticed that many of my posts have copyright information at the bottom. I have done this on the off chance that someone, somewhere, may want to reproduce them. Some posts don't have copyright - obviously because they are so short and/or dumb that I don't care.

You need to understand that the copyright that I am using allows a great deal of freedom for anyone who wants to copy it. Notice that it says the following:

You are free to: Copy, distribute, display and perform this work

In practical terms, this means that you can print it out and give it to friends, or copy the text and place it on your website, or read it out in church, or place photocopies of it in storefront windows, etc. etc. etc. You don't have to ask my permission. The copyright gives you the permission.

To make Commercial use of this work.

This comes under the section "You are free to". That means that you can use my work to make money for yourself or your organisation. You don't need to contact me about it. The permission is there. I will not make any money out of it. You may use my work for any commercial venture.

Under the following conditions.

Ha ha. There is a "but"!

By Attribution: You must give the original author credit.

This means that you must include my name. You can't copy, distribute, make money out of etc without including my name at the end.

No derivative works: You may not alter, transform, or build upon the work.

In practical terms, this means that if you're going to copy distribute etc then you can't cut sections out, you can't add sections of your own and so on. In future, I may allow some works to appear under the GFDL, but that will be clear to everyone.

For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work

Simply put, this means that all that copyright info has to remain as part of the work you are copying. I know it seems long, but you're allowed to put it in a tiny font at the end. You can't copy or distribute or whatever without including this copyright info as part of it.

Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the author.

If you want to do stuff that this copyright does not allow, you can contact me. I'm a nice guy - I'm likely to cave in to anyone who wants to distribute my work.

One important thing to realise:http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/ is part of the text of the work.If you copy and distribute this work without including this website address, then you are breaking the copyright. This is why I have included the URL as part of the text.

After all, I do want people who read my work to be able to visit my website and read other stuff I have written.Visit http://creativecommons.org/ for more information about these sorts of licenses. This license suits my needs. You might like to search their website for one that might suit yours (eg allowing people to copy and distribute but NOT make commercial use).